Political Crumbs

As Smart Politics previously reported, more than 170 losing major party U.S. Senate nominees in the direct election era have come back to claim their party’s nomination a second time around, with more than five dozen eventually winning a seat in the chamber. At least one losing U.S. Senate nominee from 49 states eventually clawed his or her way back onto a subsequent general election ballot for the office…except in Michigan. None of the state’s losing 34 nominees since 1916 ever successfully came back and won their party’s nomination in a race for the nation’s upper legislative chamber. Michigan’s next U.S. Senate race won’t be until 2018, but, with that track record, it seems unlikely GOPers Pete Hoekstra (2012 nominee) or Terri Land (2014) will get another chance to win a seat for the GOP. Michigan Republicans have lost 13 of the last 14 U.S. Senate contests since 1976.

Governor Scott Walker’s entrance into the 2016 race for the GOP presidential nomination brings the tally of major party Wisconsin politicians who ran for the White House to 10 since statehood. The state’s first 100 years produced six favorite-son candidates: Democrats Henry Dodge (1852), James Doolittle (1868), and Edward Wall (1904) and Republicans Jeremiah Rusk (1888), Robert La Follette (1908, 1912, 1916, 1920, 1924), and John Blaine (1932). Democrat John Reynolds and GOP Congressman John Byrnes each won the 1964 Wisconsin presidential primary but both released their delegates to Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater respectively. Walker joins Republican Tommy Thompson (2008) as the only Wisconsinites to launch bona fide campaigns for the White House in the modern political era. For a detailed history of Wisconsin presidential candidacies click here.